9 ms·

The "in related news" story in this article is way more interesting, someone who apparently feels pretty strongly about running a pirate radio station. - FCC i

by asn0 3y ago

The "in related news" story in this article is way more interesting, someone who apparently feels pretty strongly about running a pirate radio station. - FCC is proposing $80,000 fine against a man in Oregon for operating an FM pirate radio station since 2018 - first complaint was in 2018, agents tracked it down, warned the man, and he gave them his transmitter - second complaint in 2019, agents tracked it to the man's new home, they warned him again, he gave them his transmitter - 2 stern warnings wasn't enough, because third complaint came in 2022, agents tracked it to the man's home again, the man's wife gave them 2 tranmitters - the man then posted many videos on Facebook about his pirate radio station, and dared the FCC to lock him up. He then started another pirate radio station

jacquesm 3y ago
Amsterdam pirate stations in the heyday of pirate radio (and TV!) had spares on the shelf. It usually wouldn't be more than an hour or two after a raid and they'd be back on the air as if nothing changed. In rare cases stations were off the air for more than that, and usually only because the studio itself had been raided and that took a lot more to put back together again than the transmitter location (usually far removed from the studio).
- dmix 3y ago
  How much does a transmitter (station) cost?
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Depending on the output power anything from a few hundred to many thousands, especially if you want it to be clean.
LinuxBender 3y ago
I've sat next to an FCC officer whilst operating just above and just below citizens band. He was more curious than anything about our local CB group. This may no longer be the case but at the time they didn't really care about people doing their own thing unless they were interfering with a business or any other revenue impacting shenanigans. We were careful to not interfere. Well, most of us. One of us could be heard through ceiling fans, toasters, light bulbs, TV's but he rarely spoke. We noticed that the FCC would make an example of an extreme clown about once a month and it would get published in a magazine but they always left us alone I think in part because we all used nice gear and only operated with the power required to get the job done. We would only step it up when someone was trying to clobber the truck drivers.
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  Wait what. "could be heard through light bulbs and ceiling fans"?!
  - LinuxBender 3y ago
    Yup. Even though he had a nice President series radio, he was driving the amp too hard and his beam antenna was aligned to skip to the south-east of the US which happened to align with the 15KV lines. He liked to occasionally talk smack to the guys in the Louisiana swamp lands. I guess one could say that was an old school troll.
    - salad-tycoon 3y ago
      > yup. So obviously fans don’t have speakers or Alexa in them, I think. How does this work for things without speakers to produce sounds? You hear sounds from the motor/wiring? I never even imagined this was a thing.
      - LinuxBender 3y ago
        So obviously fans don’t have speakers or Alexa in them, I think. At the time the internet was just a slow link between a few colleges and nobody had cell phones so I tend to agree. You hear sounds from the motor/wiring? I honestly don't know. The only induced reactions I can explain are when the truckers running powerful RF linear amps could partially illuminate the fluorescent lights at trucks stops. But I have no idea how he managed to induce not only enough signal to make noise but to also somewhat hear his voice. It was very "tinny" and raspy sounding. The more I think about it the sound was similar to what one might hear if they had two cups connected by string and someone was screaming into it.
  - joecool1029 3y ago
    Couple years ago I was driving down the highway and got within a few hundred meters of a guy who was no doubt shooting skip on CB (skipping the ionosphere to work hundreds of miles away). The signal was powerful enough that when he keyed on his taillights would almost shut off and I could hear him through the cassette adapter in my car.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
I know it's not a popular opinion, but the AM/FM radio bands have become such (corporate) crap that I laud people like this radio pirate. I wish a kind of public-access could open up on half the frequencies on the dial.
- giantg2 3y ago
  "I wish a kind of public-access could open up on half the frequencies" You can always run a net on ham.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- myself248 3y ago
  Pretty damn popular with me. Licensing and ownership rules are as corrupt as can be. Radio belongs to the people, it is the definition of a public good. It is incontrovertible that the ownership rules will be tweaked in the direction of corporate interests at every opportunity. People (you and I, and our elected representatives, and pirates) need to do everything possible to yank it back, as far and as hard as we can. The fact that LPFM hasn't even _pretended_ to offer the _opportunity_ for a license in _ten years_ is everything you need to know about that farce.
  - RF_Enthusiast 3y ago
    The timing of LPFM windows can't really be closer than 10 years from the previous window. Filing windows with LPFM and certain other services can't overlap, and there legally needs to be time between each for consider objections and competing applications. An LPFM window can not overlap with: (1) Full Power Non-Commercial FM Stations, (2) Full Power Commercial FM Stations, (3) FM Translators (or, repeaters), (4) Full Power TV Stations, and (5) Low Power TV Stations. These windows can not overlap because each of the above services must consider each other in their applications. The FCC is still wrapping up decisions from the recent 2021 Non-Commercial FM filing window, and has said that they expect LPFM to be next. But they can't do that until the public has the opportunity to object to the final permit granted.
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- RF_Enthusiast 3y ago
  No, most of these broadcast enforcement actions are driven by interference reported by licensed broadcasters. I don't know (offhand) who reported interference for the Portland station, but they were running an analog FM signal over the digital signal of a licensed independent public broadcaster. There were two signals on the bandwidth between 90.5-90.6 MHz. If a pirate station operates in the same town on the same frequency, it's likely a complaint would generate from that.
- ok123456 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 3y ago
    Generational flamewar is not ok here. No more of this, please. Fortunately, it's particularly easy to avoid. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Johnythree 3y ago
  Amateur radio is by definition self-policing. The operators are required to keep their own frequencies clean, and will go to considerable length to do so. They have little interest however in interference involving CB, broadcast FM or similar (unless they are asked to assist). Most interference investigations into Broadcast (TV, AM or FM) are triggered by complaints from the commercial licensee (who pay big money to use the channel).
  - lima 3y ago
    Yep. Amateur radio operators couldn't care less about a pirate FM station, but will fiercely defend their own bands. Our local ham community once got a foreign country to move their over-horizon radar off the ham bands by escalating it with the authorities until they raised a formal diplomatic complaint. Lol. And rightfully so - ham bands are under constant threat of getting reclassified and auctioned off to the highest bidder. It's use it or lose it.
excalibur 3y ago
Was it Christian Slater?
- IndoorPatio 3y ago
  +1
throwaway743 3y ago
This gives Kurupt FM vibes
avx56 3y ago
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-barnes-985020a2 https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-barnes-985020a2 His LinkedIn lists his job as "Pirate Radio" lol. (archive: https://archive.is/9UHfk https://archive.is/9UHfk)

by asn0 3y ago

jacquesm 3y ago

Amsterdam pirate stations in the heyday of pirate radio (and TV!) had spares on the shelf. It usually wouldn't be more than an hour or two after a raid and they'd be back on the air as if nothing changed. In rare cases stations were off the air for more than that, and usually only because the studio itself had been raided and that took a lot more to put back together again than the transmitter location (usually far removed from the studio).

dmix 3y ago
How much does a transmitter (station) cost?
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Depending on the output power anything from a few hundred to many thousands, especially if you want it to be clean.

LinuxBender 3y ago

I've sat next to an FCC officer whilst operating just above and just below citizens band. He was more curious than anything about our local CB group. This may no longer be the case but at the time they didn't really care about people doing their own thing unless they were interfering with a business or any other revenue impacting shenanigans. We were careful to not interfere. Well, most of us. One of us could be heard through ceiling fans, toasters, light bulbs, TV's but he rarely spoke. We noticed that the FCC would make an example of an extreme clown about once a month and it would get published in a magazine but they always left us alone I think in part because we all used nice gear and only operated with the power required to get the job done. We would only step it up when someone was trying to clobber the truck drivers.

lifeisstillgood 3y ago
Wait what. "could be heard through light bulbs and ceiling fans"?!
- LinuxBender 3y ago
  Yup. Even though he had a nice President series radio, he was driving the amp too hard and his beam antenna was aligned to skip to the south-east of the US which happened to align with the 15KV lines. He liked to occasionally talk smack to the guys in the Louisiana swamp lands. I guess one could say that was an old school troll.
  - salad-tycoon 3y ago
    > yup. So obviously fans don’t have speakers or Alexa in them, I think. How does this work for things without speakers to produce sounds? You hear sounds from the motor/wiring? I never even imagined this was a thing.
    - LinuxBender 3y ago
      So obviously fans don’t have speakers or Alexa in them, I think. At the time the internet was just a slow link between a few colleges and nobody had cell phones so I tend to agree. You hear sounds from the motor/wiring? I honestly don't know. The only induced reactions I can explain are when the truckers running powerful RF linear amps could partially illuminate the fluorescent lights at trucks stops. But I have no idea how he managed to induce not only enough signal to make noise but to also somewhat hear his voice. It was very "tinny" and raspy sounding. The more I think about it the sound was similar to what one might hear if they had two cups connected by string and someone was screaming into it.
- joecool1029 3y ago
  Couple years ago I was driving down the highway and got within a few hundred meters of a guy who was no doubt shooting skip on CB (skipping the ionosphere to work hundreds of miles away). The signal was powerful enough that when he keyed on his taillights would almost shut off and I could hear him through the cassette adapter in my car.

JKCalhoun 3y ago

I know it's not a popular opinion, but the AM/FM radio bands have become such (corporate) crap that I laud people like this radio pirate. I wish a kind of public-access could open up on half the frequencies on the dial.

giantg2 3y ago
"I wish a kind of public-access could open up on half the frequencies" You can always run a net on ham.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
myself248 3y ago
Pretty damn popular with me. Licensing and ownership rules are as corrupt as can be. Radio belongs to the people, it is the definition of a public good. It is incontrovertible that the ownership rules will be tweaked in the direction of corporate interests at every opportunity. People (you and I, and our elected representatives, and pirates) need to do everything possible to yank it back, as far and as hard as we can. The fact that LPFM hasn't even _pretended_ to offer the _opportunity_ for a license in _ten years_ is everything you need to know about that farce.
- RF_Enthusiast 3y ago
  The timing of LPFM windows can't really be closer than 10 years from the previous window. Filing windows with LPFM and certain other services can't overlap, and there legally needs to be time between each for consider objections and competing applications. An LPFM window can not overlap with: (1) Full Power Non-Commercial FM Stations, (2) Full Power Commercial FM Stations, (3) FM Translators (or, repeaters), (4) Full Power TV Stations, and (5) Low Power TV Stations. These windows can not overlap because each of the above services must consider each other in their applications. The FCC is still wrapping up decisions from the recent 2021 Non-Commercial FM filing window, and has said that they expect LPFM to be next. But they can't do that until the public has the opportunity to object to the final permit granted.

freitzkriesler2 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
RF_Enthusiast 3y ago
No, most of these broadcast enforcement actions are driven by interference reported by licensed broadcasters. I don't know (offhand) who reported interference for the Portland station, but they were running an analog FM signal over the digital signal of a licensed independent public broadcaster. There were two signals on the bandwidth between 90.5-90.6 MHz. If a pirate station operates in the same town on the same frequency, it's likely a complaint would generate from that.
ok123456 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  Generational flamewar is not ok here. No more of this, please. Fortunately, it's particularly easy to avoid. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Johnythree 3y ago
Amateur radio is by definition self-policing. The operators are required to keep their own frequencies clean, and will go to considerable length to do so. They have little interest however in interference involving CB, broadcast FM or similar (unless they are asked to assist). Most interference investigations into Broadcast (TV, AM or FM) are triggered by complaints from the commercial licensee (who pay big money to use the channel).
- lima 3y ago
  Yep. Amateur radio operators couldn't care less about a pirate FM station, but will fiercely defend their own bands. Our local ham community once got a foreign country to move their over-horizon radar off the ham bands by escalating it with the authorities until they raised a formal diplomatic complaint. Lol. And rightfully so - ham bands are under constant threat of getting reclassified and auctioned off to the highest bidder. It's use it or lose it.

excalibur 3y ago

Was it Christian Slater?

IndoorPatio 3y ago
+1

throwaway743 3y ago

This gives Kurupt FM vibes

avx56 3y ago

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-barnes-985020a2 https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-barnes-985020a2 His LinkedIn lists his job as "Pirate Radio" lol. (archive: https://archive.is/9UHfk https://archive.is/9UHfk)